{"id":14880,"date":"2012-01-16T09:59:40","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T17:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14880"},"modified":"2012-01-16T10:01:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T18:01:46","slug":"what-dr-king-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14880","title":{"rendered":"What Dr. King Did"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We all know what Martin Luther King, Jr. did. He marched, and integrated the lunch counters, and made white people and black people friends forever and ever, and also he opposed affirmative action because he had that one line in that speech that conservatives love to quote.<\/p>\n

This is what King did, and it’s a comforting tale. Sure, white people were a bit crazy in the South (and only the South; certainly not the North, were all us white people were already super-nice), and yeah, that whole drinking fountain thing was kind of silly, and it was good that he got rid of it.<\/p>\n

But of course, that wasn’t what King did. He — and the many people who worked with him — did far more than that, though we don’t like to admit it much, because admitting it forces white people to admit to sins far more grievous than simply requiring kids to go to different schools based on skin color. Imani has a\u00a0guest-post up by Hamden Rice<\/a>\u00a0laying out exactly what King\u00a0did\u00a0<\/em>do, and while it’s a lot more painful that we care to remember, it’s extremely important that we never forget it:<\/p>\n

The reason I\u2019m posting this is because there were dueling diaries over the weekend about Dr. King\u2019s legacy, and there is a diary up now (not on the rec list but on the recent list) entitled, \u201cMartin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s Dream Not Yet Realized.\u201d I\u2019m sure the diarist means well as did the others. But what most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because\u00a0his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer.<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King\u2019s legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

So anyway, I was having this argument with my father about Martin Luther King and how his message was too conservative compared to Malcolm X\u2019s message. My father got really angry at me. It wasn\u2019t that he disliked Malcolm X, but his point was that Malcolm X hadn\u2019t accomplished anything as Dr. King had.<\/p>\n

I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his \u201cI have a dream speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I tell you what my father told me, I want to digress. Because at this point in our amnesiac national existence, my question pretty much reflects the national civic religion view of what Dr. King accomplished.\u00a0He gave this great speech.<\/strong>Or some people say, \u201che marched<\/strong>.\u201d I was so angry at Mrs. Clinton during the primaries when she said that Dr. King marched, but it was LBJ who delivered the Civil Rights Act.<\/p>\n

At this point, I would like to remind everyone exactly what Martin Luther King did, and it wasn\u2019t that he \u201cmarched\u201d or gave a great speech.<\/p>\n

My father told me with a sort of cold fury,\u00a0\u201cDr. King ended the terror of living in the south.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing. Really — the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Image: Postcard commemorating the\u00a01920 Duluth, Minnesota lynchings<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know what Martin Luther King, Jr. did. He marched, and integrated the lunch counters, and made white people and black people friends forever and ever, and also he opposed affirmative action because he had that one line in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14882,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14880\/revisions\/14882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}